Family in town, the Super Bowl. Life is good !!

what is the warren buffet book called?

http://www.amazon.com/The-Warren-Buf...ren+buffet+way

Good updates as usual, T. Good to see you handling that downswing--had one myself in December. You already know this, but as long as it's just running bad and not making bad decisions, things eventually turn around. Just have to remind ourselves as downswings persist.

Gonna be in town for two weeks starting 2/18. Would like to have lunch or dinner with you and the rest of the V gang!

Sure thing man, you know where to find me!

Hey guys, had a fun week with my brother and dad in town for the Super Bowl. Unfortunately the game was awful but it was still a good time.

The action has been great with DSE but I haven't been playing a ton of poker lately as my motivation levels have been ultra low. I've been doing more going out/social type stuff though so its not like I'm sitting at home all day watching TV. I also think some of it is me just being temporarily bored with poker and not wanting to play. When I don't pay close attention I end up on autopilot, which is boring and then I don't want to play. Its not like my results have been bad; they've been pretty much right on par, my motivation is just not there. I'm reminded of a quote I've read in a few different places that says "People often say that motivation is temporary. Well, so is bathing-that's why we recommend it daily".

I find non-monetary motivation to work best so I've been looking for sources of motivation that don't directly involve money like learning other games that interest me and wanting to do things outside of poker that take time and cost money. Even though that does involve money, I feel its more effective when the reason for making money is to use it for something fun/interesting that you want to do rather than trying to motivate yourself to make money just for the sake of having money.

I played the V 5/10 game for a few days after the last big win I reported. Three guys from out east were in town which made the game good for a few days. The day they were leaving they wanted to start a game at 11am but the game never really goes then and they wanted a full table. So the day before, another reg got my number and contacted a couple others to show up early and get a game running. Even though its just a 5/10 game, it felt pretty baller to be showing up early to start a game for specific players, which is basically how the nosebleed games operate in Vegas.

I also played a bit of PLO last week, booking a small win and couple small losers. I stand by what I said before about not grinding PLO but its nice to break up the monotony of holdem every once in a while.

Was back at the 2 card game Wednesday and played a brief session at 5/10 until the game got bad and then played a couple hours at 2/5. I got pretty lucky in a blind vs. blind pot against a very good player. From the sb I ran TT into his AA, flopped a set and won a nearly 400bb pot.

Will be back on the felt tomorrow looking to get into a rhythm and back on a somewhat regular schedule.

cliffs of this thread? I read the OP and was enticed

Hey sir ,how does a solid player loose 200bb bvb with AA please ? was it 5b pre and you binked a set or ? Or he cant get away with AA on T 8 9 ss ? I cant see myself going busto in that spot in 3b pot even at NL 10...maybe he flat your 4bet and played it wrong imo ?....

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It was a 4 bet pot blind vs. blind. Flop was something like T74ss.

If your not feeling like playing right now then do some traveling or something man, as long as you can afford it you should spend a couple k and enjoy yourself. Maybe get out of Vegas and get healthy go to Hawaii.

So something like15 ..3b 45...u 4b we 100 and he flated...just unlucky AA i guess he wanted to keep ur blufss in...nh

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Yea this is a good idea, I'm just not a huge traveller. Usually I just take a few days off and relax but stay around here. Need to start golfing again.

Hey guys so after my last update I decided to mix it up (pun intended) and play some non-holdem stuff. I started out playing 15/30 O8 at V but the game broke and it turned into an 8/16 mix game. I've been wanting to play some other games for a while so basically said **** it and stuck around to start the game. We played an 8 game rotation of 2-7 triple draw, A-5 triple draw, badeucey, badacey, badugi, razzdugi, O8 and Stud 8. The only game I had ever played before was O8 but because of my interest in the other games I knew the rules and basic betting structure for all of them. I had a lot of fun and won a bit. Obviously I could be being results oriented, but I'm fairly confident that even with no experience I was a favorite in the game just because of how lol bad the other players were. Simply being intelligent and having general card knowledge was enough to beat the rake in that game. Now if I was playing one of the mid stakes+ games I'd certainly be a huge dog.

Played one other session of 15/30 O8 in which I took a big loser due to playing too many hands in a full ring game after getting used to playing the short handed games online.

Other than that its been all holdem and similar to last month its been streaky. Including the O8 session I had a few big consecutive losing days, including a 1 hour session that I basically tilt-quit after losing some annoying pots.

Then I went on a tear for a couple days, bouncing between V and Wynn playing a mix of 2/5 and 5/10 and booking a bunch of wins, negating my downswing and then some.

Yesterday I lost a bunch mostly because of one pot in which I rode the variance train in a wild game and it didn't pan out. Today I again bounced between Wynn and V, winning a decent chunk overall.

I still haven't been playing a ton of hours due to a combination of meh games certain days and simply not wanting to play long sessions. I'm ok with that though because while they haven't been long, my sessions have gotten more consistent and I'm playing way better than before. I've just been a lot more focused and in tune to what's going on and my reads have been much sharper. Before I'd get lost in spots and think I just forgot how to play poker but in reality had I been paying attention I would have known exactly where I was at. There was no revolutionary secret to learn and I hadn't lost my poker skill, I just wasn't paying attention and correlating people's actions to the hands they showed down. Being more focused also gives me the confidence to go with reads in marginal situations which is just a tremendous boost to my psyche and my win-rate.

Question : what are your thoughts on supplementating with the online games out there?

Assuming you mean supplementing income, I'd say its not worth it and won't be until we get player pools from other states/countries to combine. I just did it to play some low stakes O8 and get some hands in. Even those games are sporadic though. NLH runs more consistent but those games are complete dog**** imo. I know some might argue with me but I'm not gonna play a .5/1 or 1/2 6 max game with me, 4 guys that know wtf they're doing and one guy thats kinda bad when I can go play 2/5 with infinitely softer lineups. Even some of the marginal lineups at 5/10 are better than those online games in terms of hourly expectation even when you factor in more hands/hr and multi-tabling. I don't have an online background though so maybe someone that does will see those games differently, but even then those games are far from soft when compared to live games.

Ed Miller quote from Nov 16th, 2013

"Stars players would have an aneurysm if they saw how soft the NV online games are. Now we just need a few interstate compacts."

https://twitter.com/EdMillerPoker/st...71171542831105

Online games are pretty dead compared to 5 or 6 months ago but every now and then a good game will break out. The problem is the bad players don't last very long so you have to be on top of things. I think it's smart to have some money on both sites just in case you see a good game break out. More table selection can't be a bad thing.

Now it's moved to NJ. Sweat a friend of mine grinding 50nl and 100nl over there and the average level of play was absolutely abysmal.

I've continued to bounce around the last couple weeks, mostly between Wynn and V. A lot of my days have consisted of 2-3 very short sessions while I'm finding better games or waiting at 2/5 for a 5/10 game.

Right after my last update I actually played what I'm pretty sure is my biggest pot ever. 300bb deep at 5/10 a guy took a wicked strange line with AKs against my KK. He did flop a diamond flush draw so when the money went in on the turn he had 12 outs, which was somewhat disappointing to see since I thought I had him running to 2 outs with a smaller over pair. I didn't have much time to think about it though, because the dealer instantly ripped and flipped a safe river for me and shipped me my biggest pot ever.

The last few days have been very strange schedule wise. I decided to try out a graveyard type schedule where I wake up early and sleep from about 7-8pm till 1-2am. I really only played one full session on this schedule, which was a 5am-11am session on Thursday morning. Played in a good 5/10 game and won a decent amount but talking to another reg who had been in the game all night, it was not typical for the game to be going and full at those hours. Then this morning I was up even earlier but Bellagio was dead and Wynn wasn't much better. Without a great game going I was no longer excited to be playing at 2am and packed it up after about an hour. It was an interesting experiment to say the least but it would take me a while to adjust to a schedule like that and isn't something I could maintain long term so its not something I'll be doing much more of.

For ****s and giggles I played an online satellite to the WSOPc Main Event at Caesars and got 2nd. They only gave away one seat but I got $665 in remainder money as consolation prize which was nice.

So despite some decent results so far this year, volume still has been very low. I get short bursts of motivation but they seem to be fizzling much faster that usual lately. A couple times in the last week and a half I've left after a very short session because I just really wasn't in the mood to play good poker. Quite frankly I haven't been having nearly as much fun with poker as I used to even though I've been winning at a decent clip. As I've discussed previously itt, I always knew I wasn't gonna play full-time poker the rest of my life and was using it as a launching pad to finance other passive/semi-passive investments. Lately I've been trying to play full-time hours because I felt like I had to even though I had no good reason to feel that way and wasn't happy doing it. Basically what I've realized is that I've reached the point where I want to play less and do some other stuff. This realization was important to me because simply acknowledging that I want to play less and thats completely fine and in line with my goals is incredibly liberating. I'm still not interested in the 9-5 life and want to maintain the freedom that I have playing poker. I've been exploring other avenues for achieving the income I need while maintaining a free schedule. Some have to do with poker, just not playing full time, and some are unrelated. Right now I'm still mostly in the information gathering stage for this stuff but I'm excited to start diversifying my income.

I hope this post didn't come off as too much of a downer because its really not. I'm not quitting poker. I still enjoy poker, just not when I'm playing full-time. I'm ready to move on to the next phase where I play some poker and use what I've made so far to generate other income streams. This will take some time so its not like tomorrow I'm gonna instantly have a different routine. I'm just going to start working more actively on finding ways to use my capital to generate income.

I know where you're at. It's pretty normal I think. Just gotta figure out what balance is best for you.

I pretty much never play more than 5 days in a week because I won't play if I can't stay focused and I really struggled to put in hours last year because my avg session was like five hours. If I play more days I inevitably start playing bad so this year I've been trying to play four 8+ hr sessions per week. Sometimes I get a 5th day in but if I don't no sweat because of the 120 hours I do play at least 90 will be A game and the rest will be B/B+ at the worse and still have a decent hourly.

I used to put in heavy hours online because I was eager to learn and get better but I just don't have that obsession for the game anymore and probably never will again but that's ok. I love the freedom I have playing poker so that's kinda where I draw my motivation to play and continue building my roll now. But you've only been playing a couple years lol so man up Maybe go play some softer games somewhere like LA or Florida and see if that doesn't get the juices flowing a bit.

Have you been playing any O8 lately? Can't recommend learning and becoming proficient in other games enough.

you're smart to diversify anyway imo, poker will always be there. I'm interested in what routes you're looking into/ thinking about (if you're willing to share).

Honestly this is pretty much my end goal.

Make sure you are paying the taxes and fully funding an IRA each year. If you do this each year and stick the funds in a low fee 2055 targeted retirement at Vanguard or fidelity you won't need to worry much about diversification. If self employed you can contribute even more to SEP plans. You are a finance guy so you probably know all that stuff anyway.

Maybe coaching others can be rewarding? I do taxes for this retiree who sells stuff on Amazon. She made 10k the last quarter selling stuff on Amazon. She buys stuff and puts bar codes on them and sends them to Amazon to be sold. One to two days a week she works. Business is growing for her. You may find that poker is not so bad after trying other stuff. I agree with others who say maybe some poker related business trips to other locations could be mentally rewarding.

Got an LA trip in the works for next week so maybe that will help.

I played some O8 and would like to play more. I've been playing some low stakes on wsop.com to get some hands in. They've been running 20/40 at Bellagio fairly consistently the last couple weeks and I need to check it out. Went there once to play it but it wasn't running despite having a full game and list on bravo when I left.

I'd love to get in to the mixed game stuff but I have no background in the draw and stud games so would prefer to be able to play them online at low stakes and get a bunch of hands in before jumping into the games here, which generally are 40/80+.

Yea, here are some of my ideas right now:

1. Stock market: I already have a decent chunk invested in mutual funds and am considering taking a more active approach in trading. I talk regularly with a guy that used to work on wall st and he keeps telling me I need to set up a trading account. This year is supposedly going to be more volatile, which is good for trading. I'm not super sure about this option because I've always been a believer in passive broad based indexing and have a hard time believing an individual can outperform the market after taking trading costs into account but its something worth looking into. If nothing else I will for sure be adding to my current investments.

2. Starting a business: I have no ideas but I'd like to set something up that eventually would result in passive income. Just read "The 4-hour Work Week" by Timothy Ferris and would love to set something up similar to what he describes.

3. Real estate: Not looking to do this for income but I'm planning to buy a house/condo this year once my lease expires. The market is still pretty low and it would be a great way to build up some equity instead of renting.

4. Poker stuff: Coaching is the first thing that comes to mind. I have a good grasp on the 2/5 games in Vegas but just haven't taken an active approach in finding students.

Yep I pay taxes and max out my IRA every year. I had some stuff with Oppenheimer before I was even a poker player but last year started an investment account with Vanguard as well.

The Amazon thing you describe is similar to what I'd like to set up, just need to figure out exactly what to do.

Congrats on winning your biggest pot ever! As others have said, you're living a dream that many of us 9-5ers wish we could and you've clearly proven yourself to be a very good and disciplined player.

Have you considered picking up a job out there day/prop trading? While it is a more "conventional" pursuit than poker, many of the skills you're clearly mastering (quick decision making, discipline, table/stock selection, leveraging risk when you perceive an edge, etc) are highly transferable to day trading.

I say this from experience as I was a day trader for a proprietary trading company out of NYC from 2005-2007. To this day, it's the most fun job I ever had; but I eventually came to the realization that I wasn't good enough to make it a career.

There are definitely a few such firms in Vegas, so maybe that's something you could consider. It's also the type of job where you can make your own schedule, which is something else that may appeal to you.